Electronic circuits may be constructed from electronic components, such as integrated circuits (ICs), discrete active components (e.g. transistors), discrete passive components (e.g. capacitors, resistors, inductors, and/or diodes), and/or various types of connectors, etc. These electronic components may be mounted onto a printed circuit board (PCB), which is normally built up from electrically conductive layers forming wires for electrically connecting the electronic components, and of insulating dielectric layers arranged between the electrically conductive layers. In order to facilitate the use of relatively high signal frequencies (e.g. for bit-serial digital signals with relatively high bitrates) in the wires, it is normally desirable to use dielectric layers with relatively low dissipation factor. Furthermore, power-supply planes are normally formed in various ones of the electrically conductive layers for supplying different supply voltages, such as ground (or 0 V), and one or more positive and/or negative supply voltages. In order to connect different conductive layers with each other and/or to one or more of the electronic components, so called vias of electrically conductive material passing through holes in the insulating layers are normally arranged in the PCBs. To e.g. reduce the impact of switching activity in digital components of the electronic circuit, capacitors connected between different supply voltages (such as between ground and a positive supply voltage) are normally provided in close proximity to the power-supply terminals of ICs in the electronic circuit for stabilizing the supply-voltage levels. Such capacitors are normally referred to as decoupling capacitors.
In order to simplify the production of electronic circuits, thereby reducing the production time and/or cost, it is desirable to keep the number of components in the electronic circuit to be mounted on the PCB relatively low.